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Outta Compton....Good for race issues or bad?

Is this a racialist thing? Is Compton in Canadia? I'm confused.
 
LogGrad98 said:
Is this a racialist thing? Is Compton in Canadia? I'm confused.
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Take a Sunday drive around town. Compton is symbolic as the ultimate destiny of mankind, you'll find a little Compton just south of anywhere, or just east of Reno.
 
I was a pretty big fan of NWA in the very early 90s. I'd be interested in this movie.
 
When I was in little league football our team got to go to California to play some games. We stayed with another team's families... in Compton. A teammate and I stayed with a family of two twin brothers who were on the opposing team. To say that it was a culture shock (at least for me) is a vast understatement. I was 13. They had a german shepard who was trained to kill. I grew up with german shepards so I thought I would be okay, but this dog almost disassembled me on two occassions. Once I barely escaped him by jumping on top of the family car while the brothers tackled the dog. The bedroom I stayed in was covered, floor to ceiling, with porn. When we went for walks we had to carry a rock or a brick so that we could smash in the heads of any dogs if they attacked. The mother wouldn't me let leave the table in the morning until I ate all my gritz. It was absolutely terrible and I have never eaten it before or since. After winning both of the games we played on the trip, the highlight was going to Disneyland with our host families. It was my first time there and I was very excited, but instead of going on rides I found myself spending the day running awey from security because my hosts thought the most entertaining thing to do at Disneyland was shoplift. I know without question that if I'd had to grow up in that environment I would have become a very different person than I am today. I have mad respect for anyone who survives it. I have mad disrespect for Carolina because it takes nothing but cowardice to sit back and claim that these people should become something different than they are.
 
Pulling off the Compton exit to get gas is always a fun psychological experiment when in Los Angeles with people that aren't super familiar with the area. You can tell who listened/watched to this stuff growing up because they are the ones that either get all tense or go ape **** as if you were putting their life in danger or something.
 
So we are trying to find a showing of straigt outta compton. I would like to go see it if I can. I watched a video about the anti-cop anthem, F Tha Police and then this blurb:

https://www.yahoo.com/movies/ice-cube-f-tha-police-straight-outta-compton-126617154952.html

And it got me to wondering. Did this song do anything to help race relations, or hurt them, or neutral (as in not a big enough impact from one song or group or whatever). The part that struck me were things like this from the lyrics:

[let the filter edit out swears]

To the police I'm sayin **** you punk
Readin my rights and ****, it's all junk
Pullin out a silly club, so you stand
With a fake assed badge and a gun in your hand

But take off the gun so you can see what's up
And we'll go at it punk, I'ma **** you up

Make ya think I'm a kick your ***
But drop your gat, and Ren's gonna blast
I'm sneaky as **** when it comes to crime
But I'm a smoke em now, and not next time

Smoke any mutha****a that sweats me
Or any assho that threatens me
I'm a sniper with a hell of a scope
Takin out a cop or two, they can't cope with me

The mutha****in villian that's mad
With potential to get bad as ****
So I'm a turn it around
Put in my clip, yo, and this is the sound
Ya, somethin like that, but it all depends on the size of the gat

Takin out a police would make my day
But a ***** like Ren don't give a **** to say
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And then this statement from the yahoo article:

“The song is as relevant to me today as it was when we recorded it,” Cube told Yahoo Movies, which you can watch in the video above. The rapper-actor-producer's N.W.A. bandmate, DJ Yella, echoed those sentiments. "It's basically the same thing we were talking about 26 years ago," he said. "Now it's just the media and cell phones are capturing it all.... They haven't fixed the problem."
...
“We were right on time back then, and we’re right on time now, that’s just been the magic behind the group,” Cube said when asked if the film seems more urgent now than it did when it first began development in 2009. “It’s sad that it’s still happening now,” added director F. Gary Gray. “But I think we’re shining a light on it. I think change is coming because there’s so much attention surrounding it.”
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So I was just wondering, is it worse now than it was then? The same? Did their song and their band have any influence on race in this country at all? If so, was it good or bad?

I can't help but think that it didn't do good things for the movement. Driving the wedge in deeper seems to be counterproductive. It could be argued that it shed some light on the subject, but pissing off a lot of young black men and giving the racist cops out there something to latch onto doesn't seem to be the best light to shed on the topic.

I wish we had someone of color on this board that was around then and can really assess before and after. I googled for something that might give us some foundation for a discussion here but couldn't find much about the issue say during the 80's and then into the late 90's and 00's.

Thoughts?
 
LogGrad98 said:
I can't help but think that it didn't do good things for the movement. Driving the wedge in deeper seems to be counterproductive. It could be argued that it shed some light on the subject, but pissing off a lot of young black men and giving the racist cops out there something to latch onto doesn't seem to be the best light to shed on the topic.
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The fact you even reference that there needed to be a 'movement' to begin with should tell you all you need to know. I haven't seen the movie and am too young to remember when they were popular but I can tell you that I appreciate their art because it let me learn a perspective and hear stories from a culture I was unfamiliar with growing up white in Idaho. Many white people reject art/ideas that challenge their identity or make them feel guilty despite not being personally accountable, so while it's already deplorable that there needed to be a 'movement' to make things equal on all levels in this society for different races I don't know if NWA did a lot to move the needle because they probably didn't inspire many white people in positions of power/decision makers with their approach/message.

Whether it's a rap group with very obscene language, well-thought out poets and speakers, very peaceful yet large protests or any other vehicle to make change is futile it seems. There is a large portion of this country that feels personally attacked when you tell them that white Christians who came to this country and stole the land from the native Americans, and also utilized slavery to build the foundation of the economy, WERE racist. Someone can be white, Christian and conservative today and not be held responsible for anything that happened prior to their existence so long as they acknowledge the ****ed up landscape in this country and do something about it to change it for the better through their actions.
 
I also wanted to add that I read some morbid things about how the movie studio is marketing the movie as if NWA were fighting to speak out against oppression from the police - and that's how they became popular - so as to drum up all these current sentiments to get people to see it. NWA was not about that. They had a song called F the Police, but they weren't about speaking out to the government at all. They were about spittin raps about their lifestyle in California in a time when most of the mainstream rap was coming out of the east coast.
 
HighlandHomie said:
The fact you even reference that there needed to be a 'movement' to begin with should tell you all you need to know. I haven't seen the movie and am too young to remember when they were popular but I can tell you that I appreciate their art because it let me learn a perspective and hear stories from a culture I was unfamiliar with growing up white in Idaho. Many white people reject art/ideas that challenge their identity or make them feel guilty despite not being personally accountable, so while it's already deplorable that there needed to be a 'movement' to make things equal on all levels in this society for different races I don't know if NWA did a lot to move the needle because they probably didn't inspire many white people in positions of power/decision makers with their approach/message.

Whether it's a rap group with very obscene language, well-thought out poets and speakers, very peaceful yet large protests or any other vehicle to make change is futile it seems. There is a large portion of this country that feels personally attacked when you tell them that white Christians who came to this country and stole the land from the native Americans, and also utilized slavery to build the foundation of the economy, WERE racist. Someone can be white, Christian and conservative today and not be held responsible for anything that happened prior to their existence so long as they acknowledge the ****ed up landscape in this country and do something about it to change it for the better through their actions.
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There has been a movement all along. It started in the 1860's. It gained steam in the 1960's and has improved a lot in the last 50 years comparatively, so of course we would talk about the movement. The question is does this kind of thing help it or hurt it? If they had approached this differently do you think we would be further ahead of where we are or further behind? Or was this exactly the shot in the arm it needed at the time?

I also think you are right, as bolded above especially.
 
well i blame obama.
black criminal gets shot he speaks out.
black innocent kid gets shot he speaks out.
white guy gets shot crickets.

obama divided this country more then ever.

for example the recent iran deal. he calls oponents stupid and retarded. and dont get how the world works. dividing the people once more.


so in part obama failed on another portion of his campaign promise. remember 1 debate between him and hillary and him claiming he is better equipped to gap the racial divide.

well guess what obummer the gap is wider that since maybe the segregation area
 
Log, did you ever listen to NWA back in the late 80s early 90s? I can say that they were the first contemporary band I ever liked. I grew up in the 80s/90s and never got into the hair bands and rock opera **** that was popular then. My parents had a huge record collection and I listened to a bunch of stuff from the 60s, but it wasn't until NWA and Straight Outta Compton that I started listening to "new" music. So, they have a special place in my heart.

I don't know if they improved anything or if that was ever the point. They expressed their point of view and it's for the rest of us to take that in and try to understand how they came to that point of view, or not. I think the cultural phenomenon of gangsta rap opened a lot of people's eyes to the reality in american inner cities. For better or worse.
 
LOVE the straight outta compton cassette tape. Literally have every word from every song on that bitch memorized still to this day.

Weird that MC Ren was so good in nwa and had one really good solo album and then disappeared.
Wonder what happened to him
 
fishonjazz said:
LOVE the straight outta compton cassette tape. Literally have every word from every song on that bitch memorized still to this day.

Weird that MC Ren was so good in nwa and had one really good solo album and then disappeared.
Wonder what happened to him
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Especially since Dr. Dre and Ice Cube have gone on to make insanely huge amounts of money. Maybe he's in the background on some of that stuff raking in the cash.
 
just because I've never paid enough attention...

Is Ice Cube the one that's married to someone named Coco and they have a TV show and they're going to have a baby? Or is that some other Ice-something?

(not that it matters or is the least bit pertinent to the discussion though!)
 
moevillini said:
just because I've never paid enough attention...

Is Ice Cube the one that's married to someone named Coco and they have a TV show and they're going to have a baby? Or is that some other Ice-something?

(not that it matters or is the least bit pertinent to the discussion though!)
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Wrong.
It's ice-T that you are thinking of
 
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